One napkin at a time

Billy Ivey started Napkinisms after his napkins with messages to his kids in their school lunches went viral after he posted them to Instagram. Now, his messages help kids from all over, including Children’s of Alabama.

For 15 years now, Billy Ivey has been trying to make his kids smile through messages on the napkins he puts in their lunch. He was amazed to find out last year that his 13-year-old daughter has been keeping nearly every single one of them.

“I’m not exaggerating or being facetious — she has thousands of these things,” Ivey said. “But what it did for me is it made me say, ‘This isn’t frivolous, this isn’t a silly thing to get attention on Instagram.’ It actually means something to them, and that’s cool.”

Ivey, who lives with his wife and five kids off Alabama 119, said he didn’t realize when he posted a humorous picture of one of these napkins on his Instagram that it would lead to the movement called Napkinisms.

“I’ve always tried to be funny. I try to make my kids smile. The first one I ever posted that received any recognition was, ‘Remember every time you smile, a mean kid gets diarrhea,’” Ivey said.

About two and a half years ago, Ivey got a tremendous response. In less than a week, he had thousands of followers. He said even though he hates the word “viral,” he admits that’s what happened with his napkins. As more and more people found him, they reached out to tell him how much they loved it.

“I say it all the time, but it is a little embarrassing the amount of attention Napkinisms gets because I didn’t invent putting notes in your kid’s lunchboxes. That has been done for as long as lunches have been made,” Ivey said. “I’ve done it for a long, long time, and as they’ve started to get older, I’ve been able to get a little cheekier with them and have fun.”

Ivey said their family has always been “pretty wide open” and silly with one another. They are all creative and constantly poking fun and making each other laugh.

“They don’t ever get surprised by anything I write,” Ivey laughed, adding they are excited by the new movement. “I think they’re proud, proud to be a part of it. I think it’s really neat that this is something that started with them.”

When the summer of 2017 rolled around, a friend who worked at Chick-fil-A’s corporate headquarters in Atlanta called one day and asked what he planned to do in the summertime when he didn’t have to make his kids lunches.

“I told them I wasn’t going to do anything, and he darn near demanded that I keep going. He said, ‘People expect this. … Sometimes you’re the only positive light they see all day,’” he said.

The next day, he called back and asked Ivey if he wanted to partner with Chick-fil-A’s summer meal program, which gives free meals to organizations who feed kids in need. Ivey quickly agreed, and over the course of a couple of nights, he stayed up and wrote 300 notes.

“I sent them, and he responded with such excitement. I mean, you should have seen them, the kids were squealing, and the parents were laughing, and the people that were packing lunches were taking pictures of them,” Ivey said, which is why he chose to make 900 more notes the next week.

After that week, Ivey chose to call the movement Napkinisms and created a website for anyone to submit their own and contribute to helping bring a smile to people’s face. That summer, Chick-fil-A printed more than 3,000 Napkinisms on paper stock and put them in the lunches for the children to enjoy.

As of January 2019, Children’s of Alabama has also partnered with Ivey to print a message for each child at their breakfast, lunch and dinner meal at the hospital. Ivey said he now maintains a huge file of notes that they are able to send and reuse, since the hospital is printing about 400 a day.

As of January 2019, Children’s of Alabama has also partnered with Ivey to print a message for each child at their breakfast, lunch and dinner meal at the hospital. Ivey said he now maintains a huge file of notes that they are able to send and reuse, since the hospital is printing about 400 a day.

“With Children’s Hospital, it’s become kind of a program that I never intended. I love it, it’s my favorite thing in the world, and I feel really grateful and blessed to be a part of it,” Ivey said. “Some of these kids are in such dire situations that they don’t know what’s going on, they don’t care about a napkin on their tray, but maybe their families do. Maybe their big brother needed to see the message or mom really needed to know that they’re in a place where they care about us enough that they’ll write stupid stuff on napkins for us.”

Ivey said he knows it’s not his responsibility to change their life, but he knows he can change their day. Since the launch at Children’s of Alabama, he’s also been doing inspirational talks sharing the story of Napkinisms. About a year ago, he switched from working in advertising to working as a freelancer and contract writer, which has allowed him more time to give to the movement, as well.

In the meantime, he’s still writing notes for his kids, who range from fifth grade to a freshman in college. Lately, he’s had to get more creative and personalized with their notes, especially as they grow older and it’s not as “cool.”

“There was a time there their friends were asking, ‘Where’s your note?’ and they would share it with them at the lunch table, and all the kids got a kick out of them,” he said, adding he sometimes writes more serious notes. “… Like today, my daughter is trying out for cheerleading, and so I of course wrote to her: ‘I love you and good luck. You’re going to do awesome.’”

To his other kids that day, minus his daughter in college, he said, he wrote something “about poop or vomit or boogers or whatever, and that’s what they expect, and that’s what’s fun.” Ivey said his wife, Bethany, was the first one who brought up the fact that it’s not always what he’s writing, but that he’s writing something and taking some time to show care and love.

“She’s been really instrumental to me trying to stay true to not only who I am, but who my kids expect me to be, and I think that’s part of the reason why it has resonated so much [with people] because it’s a real dad being real with his real kids,” Ivey said.

Although he didn’t start writing messages for any other reason than he wanted to let his kids know he was thinking of them, Ivey said his dad once wrote him a note that resonated with him and still does to this day. When he was 15 years old and was devastated when he got cut from the basketball team, his dad wrote him a note that conveyed how attitude means everything, and it ended with “today is not yet anything, so fill it with laughter.”

“The significance of that is two-fold. It’s a great perspective, great thing for a dad to encourage his son with, and he also passed away a few months later. The significance of that in my story was that he wasn’t trying to change my life when he wrote me that story, he was just trying to change my day and he did, and it continues to through this day,” Ivey said.